British filmmaker says he expected Jan. 6 violence: ‘I thought it would be even worse’

The British filmmaker whose crew documented former President Trump and his circle around the 2020 election said he predicted violence would take place on Jan. 6, 2021, and believed the attack on the Capitol “would be even worse.”

Filmmaker Alex Holder told CBS’s Norah O’Donnell in an interview broadcast Thursday that on the eve of the Capitol riot he joked with his crew, “You know the president’s gonna tell everyone to march on the Capitol.”

“We sort of prepared for that potentially happening,” the filmmaker told O’Donnell.

As his crew documented the rallies and events leading up to Jan. 6 last year, Holder said the “volume of rhetoric and sort of the belligerence that was coming out post-election was so significant” that it “had to end with something violent.”

“Even if you look at the way the campaign was going on before, the idea of the election being something that was going to be irregular was already coming up during that time as well,” Holder said.

Holder documented Trump around the 2020 election as well as before and after the Capitol attack. The filmmaker testified for a two-hour closed door deposition on Thursday with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot.

He also turned over material to the panel. Along with footage of the Capitol riot, Holder said he provided interviews he conducted with Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence, Trump’s eldest daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump since September 2020.

The House committee held its fifth hearing on Thursday. It has postponed its final two hearings until July, in part because it obtained new evidence lawmakers will have to sift through.

On Thursday, Holder told O’Donnell that the evidence he provided, including the interviews with Trump, would contain some new revelations.

Although he was close to Trump’s orbit at the time, Holder said the outcome of Jan. 6 was inevitable because of Trump’s rhetoric.

“You’re telling 75 million people that their election doesn’t count, and they, you know, believe you,” he added. “You’re their president, and they voted for you, and you’re saying that their election doesn’t count, and then what — what else is gonna happen?”

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